Northern Ireland vs Luxembourg Predictions

Despite looming clashes with two of Europe’s biggest nations, Northern Ireland are warming up for their crucial autumn internationals with a meeting with Luxembourg this week. The hosts will meet Germany and Holland a combined four times across the next two months, as they play their final four games of their qualifying campaign. They currently lead the group with 12 points, as they look to pip one of those two giants to a place at the Euros next summer. Can they warm-up for those defining clashes by securing a win in this friendly?

This does represent an odd choice for Northern Ireland’s latest game. They’ve gone on a winning run in 2019, seeing off Estonia and Belarus home and away in the opening stages of their qualifying campaign. They seemingly want to claim a fifth straight win, to ensure they head into their huge coming games on the back of a winning run. They are heavy favourites coming into this meeting at Windsor Park, with Michael O’Neill hoping to make up for their poor Nations League campaign with another success here.

Luxembourg are winless in four games, but they were able to claim four points from their opening four matches in qualifying. However, they head into this clash with an awful record on the road in friendlies, winning only one of the last 14 – a victory away to Malta. This difficult trip is going to be a test for the visitors, who head here as rank outsiders. However, while their recent away results have been poor, they have had decent fortune going forward on the road.

Luxembourg have scored in six of their last seven away friendlies, although they’ve conceded three goals or more to Belgium, Latvia, Wales and Portugal in recent non-competitive away games. That points to a high scoring record from the visitors coming into this clash, especially given their decent record against NI. The last three meetings between these two have finished with both teams finding the back of the net, with a total of 11 goals scored across them.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland have seen a few high scoring friendly clashes at home. They’ve seen four of their last five non-competitive matches at Windsor Park finish with over 2.5 goals scored. With the hosts aiming to keep their winning run going, we can see them scoring a few here. We’re backing over 2.5 goals in Thursday’s clash, while we are backing NI to win 3-1 to continue their run of six wins in seven non-competitive matches here.